How to Sleep with a Movie Star Read Free Page A

knew better than to think that everything was as it appeared to be.
    At
People,
where I worked before I started at
Mod,
I’d made a name for myself in the business by breaking two major stories in the same year: the biggest celebrity breakup of the decade, the split between movie star Clay Terrell and pop princess Tara Templeton (thanks to the friendly relationship I’d developed after numerous interviews with the down-to-earth Clay); and the story of musical diva Annabel Warren’s breast cancer diagnosis. (I had also interviewed her numerous times, so when the cancer rumors broke, mine was the only call she decided to take.) As a result,
Mod
had come looking for me. Margaret dangled a higher salary—and much more important, the chance to work on lengthy honest-to-goodness human interest profiles—and I was sold. And just like that, I became the youngest senior celebrity editor in the business.
    I loved the job, but the move had made me some quick enemies. In the ever-gossipy world of magazines, a rumor had circulated (and lingered for six months) that I’d slept with Margaret’s boss, Bob Elder, the president of Smith-Baker Media. Of course I hadn’t, but professional jealousy tends to rage when someone several years shy of thirty snags a dream job that scores of women a decade older were after. I saw the suspicious looks sometimes, and there were still editors out there who refused to speak to me, but I was over it. I hadn’t done anything wrong to get here. I certainly hadn’t slept with Bob Elder, who was pushing sixty and was easily three times my weight. I had just done my job. And ironically, this wasn’t
my
dream job at all, anyhow.
    When I was an English major at the University of Georgia, analyzing Shakespearean innuendos, I wouldn’t have suspected that four short years later, I’d be enthusiastically asking pop stars whether they wear boxers or briefs. Or asking actresses whether they feel like Sevens, Diesels, or Miss Sixtys lift their already-perfect butts better (as if Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts
had
butts to lift).
    Speaking of perfectly sculpted women poured into designer clothing, I was snapped out of my reverie by the approach of a heavy cloud of perfume as Sidra, Sally, and Samantha all glided by in the hallway, as if on cue, on three pairs of Jimmy Choos I couldn’t have walked in if I tried.
    Wendy and I called them “the Triplets.” Somehow, miraculously, the three rulers of the fashion department roost all had names that began with an
S,
were pencil thin, abnormally tall, and had painfully pointy noses that seemed to match the painfully pointy toes of their stilettos. They all looked perpetually polished, as if they visited a beauty salon each morning before they appeared at the office, which was entirely possible since they normally didn’t grace us with their presence until after 11 a.m. There was never a hair out of place, never an inch of face without perfectly applied makeup, never a moment when their noses weren’t fixed permanently in the air.
    I caught pieces of their conversation as they passed.
    “Oh . . . my . . . God,” Sidra DeSimon,
Mod
’s coldly beautiful fashion and beauty director, said, sounding remarkably like Chandler’s ex-girlfriend Janice, from
Friends
. I wondered momentarily just how one managed to develop a voice that nasal. “She was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag from
last season
.”
    Sally and Samantha both gasped at this apparent mortal sin.
    “Last season?” Sally asked incredulously, scurrying after Sidra.
    “Ugh.” I could see Samantha shudder in horror before they disappeared around the corner.
    I made a face as I choked on the cloud of Chanel No. 5 they left swirling in their wake.
    How they managed to afford the latest in designer fashions on editorial salaries was beyond me. I suspected that, like many of the stick-thin, model-tall fashionistas who inhabited the hallways and abused the expense accounts of the country’s top women’s